Japan successfully launches lunar orbiter

Japan's space agency has launched its much-delayed lunar probe, beginning what it calls the largest mission to the moon since the U.S. Apollo flights.

The Selenological and Engineering Explorer or SELENE probe was launched Friday aboard one of the space program's mainstay H-2A rockets from its launch pad on Tanegashima, the remote island where the agency's space centre is located.

Footage of the launch carried live over the internet shows the rocket racing upward through slightly hazy skies to the southeast.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says the craft's engines and navigation systems appear to be operating normally.

The launch of SELENE came four years behind schedule.

Japan launched a moon probe in 1990 but that was a flyby mission, unlike SELENE, which is intended to orbit the moon.

It cancelled another moon shot, LUNAR-A, that was to have been launched in 2004 but had been repeatedly postponed because of mechanical and fiscal problems.

A mid-August launch date for the SELENE also had to be scrubbed after some improperly installed components were discovered that required replacement.

The SELENE project is the largest lunar mission since the U.S. Apollo program in terms of overall scope and ambition, outpacing the former Soviet Union's Luna program and NASA's Clementine and Lunar Prospector projects.

It involves placing the main satellite in orbit at an altitude of about 100 kilometres and deploying the two smaller satellites in polar orbits. Researchers will use data gathered by the probes to study the moon's origin and evolution.

The main satellite will remain in orbit for about a year.